A Guide to Google Local Listing Page Identification

Google is in the midst of a massive migration of claimed business listings from the old Places Dashboard to the new Places for Business Dashboard. Simultaneously, they are apparently also in the midst of merging the new Places for Business Dashboard interface and functionality with the Google+ Page management interface ... confusing on both a branding and functional level. Which environment do you or you client work in? How can you tell by looking at their local listing page?

These screen shots of both the management environment and the resulting pages offer you the ability to make heads or tails of where your listing was created and how to know by examining just the the listing itself.

32 Responses to “A Guide to Google Local Listing Page Identification”

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say the current state of local and the multiple dashboards often causes a headache. I’d go as far as saying it’s a bloody nightmare!

I’m hoping the midst of merging the dashboards Google will provide a better solution to managing duplicate locations which have been inadvertently created through the use of multiple dashboards. I am also hoping there will be a better system to handle/merge Google+ Business pages with Google+ Local business pages – again a massive headache for many users.

@chris
Google is moving albeit slowly towards a single, hopefully rational structure. Until such time their support team is an excellent resource to resolve duplicate issues in near real time.

Multiple dashboard usual do not create multiple listings or if they do its very temporary. Google usually merges them into a single listing. That in and of itself caused problems under the old dashboards and bulk in that multiple people could control the data. That “feature” is going away.

The problem occurs Mike when you have an old Google Places listing, a Google+ Business page (prior to the introduction of local), and a Google +Local page. Let’s use High Position as an example.

We have the older/original Google Places listing created back in the day through the Google Places dashboard – for example https://plus.google.com/118365081450789357030/. With the help of Google we’ve successfully removed all duplicate version of this which have appeared over the years – result! But it’s not over yet.

We then have the Google Business page. This is the main social hub if you like but contains no local data – for example https://plus.google.com/100114515348974367512/. This was created close to the initial launch of G+ and if memory serves me correctly was the only route for business on G+ at the time.

Correct me if I’m wrong but there is currently no way to merge these ‘profiles’?

Using the new Google Places Dashboard we’re then prompted to create yet ANOTHER Google+ Local page acting as both a local and a social platform! I don’t have an example of this for High Position as we haven’t yet been upgraded to the new Google Places dashboard; but in my experience with another business this third G+ Local/Business page sits separately to the original Google Places listing and separate to the Google+ Business page. So essentially you end up with at least 3 listings!

As I said it’s bloody confusing for me, an experienced marketer with a wealth of SEO related knowledge; so for the average Joe Local it must be an absolute brain ache!

@Chris
Google has yet to implement a single brand with locations solution. It is something that they are aware of but as of yet there is no way to relate a + Brand Page with a single or multiple + Location Pages.

For those businesses with a few locations, their Local Listing Pages should become the center of their social world and they should forgo + Brand pages. That is not really an option for larger brands with many, many locations as a location based social strategy quickly becomes untenable.

If you have one, two or three locations then I would (as painful as this sounds) delete or perhaps ignore your + Brand Page and focus your social efforts around your local pages that you upgraded.

Really, truly useful and timely post. The ‘how to spot’ section on each type of listing along with the relevant support for each type of listing is really useful. Will be sitting down with my guys tomorrow and going over this.

It also explains the confusing ‘verified in the back end’ but no verified shield on the front end issue and why that seemingly fixed itself for a few listings when they merged with the Google+ Local listings.

As Chris said above, this is confusing for folks who do this for a living so it can only be more so for people trying (It may actually be more confusing for us having to view the multiple platforms).

Well, thanks again, Google themselves should be addressing this and providing common sense guidance to people as the three platforms collide!

Mike, so what do you recommend for a business that has not claimed a Local/Places listing and is not ready for the social side. Is it still start out in Local/Places and then use the social widget when they are ready or start with a Google+ Business Page?

Mike… To claim a local page Google does not require a Google Account. If a business owner claims a local page with a non google account and then opts in at later time to Google + Social… which requires a Google account. Is the non google account abandoned one the business is verified?

Is it best to sign up with a Google Account for a Local/Places page in the first place – does it matter in the scheme of things?

If a non google email account wants to upgrade their listing to Plus I believe that google will just drive that email through the Plus persona sign up process. I am testing now but have to wait for a post card.

Also google is now auto upgrading many listings claimed via the new dashboard and not requiring a G+ persona at all.

James,
I have had success in linking Google+ Local pages with YouTube. Its important to understand that there is a 1 to 1 relationship between a G+ local page and a YouTube channel. A YouTube account can have several channels. Let me know if I can help explain part of the process you are having difficulties with. It is possible! Thanks

This is Begona writing from Spain! Thank you so much for your posts and knowledge. I would like to ask you about the following situation.

On Google Plus, I look for a business typing the business name and what I find is a profile (business?? personal??) containing the business name, people on circles and follow botton whereas if I look for this business in my Local seccion on my Google Plus, I find location information, contact information, url domain, icons for verified site, comments, photo uploading, marking place, sharing place, etc.

Perhaps the owner himself created a first profile on Google Plus and Google Maps?Can it be the case that this business has a duplicate profile on Google Plus? How can we merge both profiles?

@Begonia
It sounds as if the business does have two pages. Without looking at both I can not say with assurance what you are looking at.

IF the duplicate + Page is of the type: local AND verified then the two can be merged. If the type of +Page created was some other type than local (Brand, Event, etc) then they can no be merged. In that case the business needs to decide which is the more prominent page from which to market. Usually it is the +Page for local that Google created and he would need to delete the other type of +Page.

This is Begona writing from Spain! Thank you so much for your posts and knowledge. I would like to ask you about the following situation.

On Google Plus, I look for a business typing the business name and what I find is a profile (business?? personal??) containing the business name, people on circles and follow botton whereas if I look for this business in my Local seccion on my Google Plus, I find location information, contact information, url domain, icons for verified site, comments, photo uploading, marking place, sharing place, etc.

Perhaps the owner himself created a first profile on Google Plus and Google Maps?Can it be the case that this business has a duplicate profile on Google Plus? How can we merge both profiles?

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the post, G+ Local is really an headache.
There is something I see since about the middle of September and I’m trying to understand without success. Maybe you can have an explanation.
On google.co.uk when searching for Faro Car Hire we see a bunch of local listings about car hire in … Virsby, Sweeden
Faro is in the Algarve, Portugal. Is this an error or what? How can google mix things at this level? I can’t undertand.

@Jay
Your Faro is in Portugal but there is also a Faro, Sweeden. Google is unable to distinguish between the two and defaults to thinking you want car rental near there.

I live 10 miles from Bradford, PA in the US. But if I ask for a Bradford Car Rental I am inevitably taken to Bradford England. Why Google is unable to handle these queries correctly is not clear but once they have “made up their mind” there is little you can do.

If you, as a searcher, give Google more clues “Car Hire Faro Portugal” it will return accurate results. One assumes that if a searcher was looking for results from Faro Portugal they would figure that out.

Thank you for your answer, MIke.
In fact my Faro is Faro and the Sweeden Faro is writen with umlaut (two dots ..) over the a. So it is not the same word if we want to be precise. Besides I wonder why google mixes the two Faros just in the part of the local listing, on the rest of the listing google knows that we are talking about Faro, Portugal, I could admit your point is all the listing until the end show only sites in Sweeden.

Mapping and the local algo to a large extent function independent of the organic algo. Thus one can make a mistake that the other does not. For whatever reason the mapping side can not resolve the ambiguity.

Can you suggest to get the verification code. I listed my business over the Google Local. And Google said me that you will receive a code with in next 10-15 business days. And now 25 days passed but I didn’t got any code. I already tried previously also but no luck to get the verification code.

Thanks for your posts, these have been really useful. I’m trying to work through a tangle of Google location info!

I work for a healthcare organisation that has dozens of separate hospital sites throughout the UK, and each hospital needs a Google Place/Business Location. We have one account that covers all of them; a Google My Business Locations account shows all of the individual profiles.

But then there are also Google+ profile pages for each of the hospitals (for example https://plus.google.com/100349384556598955764/about?hl=en) and I can’t work out 1) if I have the ownership of them, 2) how/if the Business Locations and Google+ pages are linked, and 3) how I can respond to reviews etc as the business.

I have contacted Google Support and they say it is just a consequence of moving the accounts over to the new Dashboard, which we haven’t got yet, and eventually my access to the Google+ pages will appear. Is this correct or am I missing something??

@Melanie
Its hard to tell from your description exactly where you are in the process. Are you using the bulk upload to manage the listings? Has the bulk been upgraded to the new social dashboard yet? Have some listings been verified in the old Places dashboard as well? To give you a straight answer would require a deep dive into your account(s), their plus dashboard, the bulk dashboard and see what is what.

If you are in the old Bulk dashboard and some of your listings have been verified via either the old dashboard or Plus then what will likely happen is that when you do get your dashboard upgraded some of the listings might be owned by some other account.